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This project's goal is to learn
the techniques to build a bass body and neck from the raw materials.
Prior to this bass, all of SMCTek's guitars and basses have been
assembled from parts purchased online. In this case, I used materials
purchased mostly online, but the materials consist of pieces
of wood and hardware parts instead of finished necks and bodies.
The basic specs of the bass are:
- Alder body with a 5/16-inch
flame maple cap.
- Birdseye maple neck with an
Indian Rosewood fretboard
- The neck will get a satin
finish and abalone shell position markers
- Pickup configuration will
be Kent Armstrong P-Bass in the neck position, and Kent Armstrong
Jazz in the bridge position
- Natural High-gloss finish
on the body
Use these links to the sections
of this page:
After I got the bass finished,
I found that the neck was a little chunky for my taste, and the
body had sustained some scratches during the Peddler's Fair in
Oakhurst over the Memorial Day weekend. So I dismantled it, and
did the following:
- Fixed the scratches in the
body and applied several fresh coats of high-gloss lacquer
- Waited for a week for the
lacquer to harden, then polished it by hand with StewMac's polishing
compound
- Shaved a fair amount of wood
off the back of the neck and refinished it with 4 coats of sanding
sealer and 6 coats of lacquer
- Reassembled the bass and redid
the intonation.
Result: The bass is better
than ever! Very nice feel and action, great sound. And all this
can be yours for just $750
plus shipping!
This is what the bass looks
like now:
And the rest of the page has
pictures of the bass as it was being built:
The body consists of a main
blank made up of three pieces of 1-1/2 inch thick alder purchased
from Auburn Hardwoods in Auburn CA. The three pieces were edge-glued,
then sanded smooth with 100, then 150-grit sandpaper, using the
belt sander and orbital sander. Then a 5/16-inch thick cap of
bookmatched flame maple was glued to one side of this blank,
as shown in the picture:
Once the glue was set, I sanded
the flame-maple cap with 100 and 150-grit sandpaper, then traced
the outline from my Jazz Bass body template onto the surface
of the flame maple. The template is made from 1/4-inch hardboard--I
just traced around the body of my Made-In-Mexico Jazz Bass on
a sheet of hardboard, then cut it out with my scroll saw, and
sanded the edges smooth with 150-grit sandpaper.
The body blank is now ready
to be cut to shape on the band saw, as shown in the next picture:
This bandsaw is a Ryobi 9-inch
bench-top bandsaw that I bought at Home Depot for under $89 US
plus California sales tax. It's powered by a 1/3 HP motor, and
it's quite an impressive little workhorse! It took me only a
few minutes to cut the body out, and this is the firsdt time
I used the saw!
The next step is to do some
rough sanding to get the body to the right shape. The bandsaw
is a great tool, but the body's edges were pretty rough when
I was through with the cutting. I have a sanding drum attachment
for my radial saw that I used to get the edges smooth enough
for the routing steps to follow:
In the next picture the rough
sanding is complete except for the tight curved area just above
the neck pocket, where the curve is too tight for the drum. I'll
probably use the Dremel tool to clean up that section.
The next step is to rout the
neck pocket. The router will be guided by the template shown
in the next picture. I bought the template from Stewart-MacDonald,
and it actually has sections for Fender bass and Strat neck pockets.
The template is temporarily mounted on the front of the body
with double-sided tape, as shown here:
The neck pocket is done. I
cut the pocket 3/4-inch deep, slightly deeper than the standard
for Fender basses, since this body is somewhat thicker than Fender
makes their bodies--this one is 1-3/4 inches right now.
So the next step is to cut
the belly and forearm contours, which will be done with the drum
sander on the radial saw. The forearm contour on this body will
be rather subtle because the flame-maple cap is only 5/16 inch
thick, and a big contour will cut through it into the alder underneath,
which I don't want. Once these contours are cut, then I'll use
the router to round the body edges, using a 3/8-inch radius bit.
Then I'll begin sanding the body, using my hand-held orbital
sander with 60-grit, then 100-grit sandpaper. When I've got all
of the edges smooth and the body shaping completed, I'll switch
to 150-grit and start sanding by hand. The sanding will continue
with 220 and 320-grit sandpaper. The next three pictures show
the body after the contours were cut, and some of the 60-grit
sanding with the orbital sander. The first one shows the rather
small contour for the forearm:
This picture shows the fairly
conventional belly contour on the back of the body:
And this one shows the cleanup
work still to be done near the neck pocket, where the curves
are pretty tight, and the sanding drum won't fit in there to
make the job easier. This area will be done by hand and with
the Dremel tool:
This picture shows what the
neck pocket and cutaway areas look like after the cleanup and
hand-sanding are done:
The next two pictures show
the body after the hand-sanding with 150 and 220-grit sandpaper
are done:
The next phase of work on the
body is the routing of the cavities for the pickups. The bass
will have a P/J pickup configuration, with a Bartolini 8-CBP
in the neck position and a Bartolini 9JL in the bridge position.
The first thing to do is locate the positions of the pickups.
This is fairly easy because the joint between the two halves
of the bookmatched top identifies the centerline of the body.
So I placed the neck temporarily in position so that I could
locate the position of the bridge (you can see the four marks
in the picture below if you look closely). Then I took some measurements
on my MIM Jazz Bass, which has the P/J pickup configuration to
determine how far from the neck pocket each pickup should be.
The next picture shows the routing template in for the bridge
pickup mounted with double-sided tape, ready for the router (you
can also see the pencilled outline for the neck pickup):
This picture shows the neck
pickup template in place, after the cavity has been cut:
And this picture shows the
body after the routing template has been removed:
The next step is the control
cavity. The next picture shows the body after the control cavity
has been cut, and with the neck mounted so I can check to make
sure everything is positioned properly:
The neck uses the following
components:
- The neck blank is a piece
of Eastern Hard Maple with a nice flame figure to it
- The fretboard is an pre-slotted
Indian Rosewood bass fretboard from Stewart-MacDonald, with a
34-inch scale
- The truss rod is double action,
purchased from Guitar Parts USA
- The frets will be made from
medium-jumbo fretwire from Guitar Parts USA
I started by taking detailed
measurements from the Fender Made-In-Mexico neck on my Jazz Bass.
The headstock shape was taken from the parts layout drawings
on Fender's Mr. Gearhead website. Basic specifications:
- The fretboard has 21 frets,
which means that the heel end of the fretboard overhangs the
heel by about 1/2 inch
- The neck is 2-1/2 inches wide
at the heel, and 1-1/2 inches wide at the nut.
- The goal is to end up with
a fairly beefy c-shaped neck profile
- The headstock is 9/16 inch
thick, and will be drilled for standard Fender-style elephant-ear
tuners, with 11/16-inch diameter tuning peg holes.
I started by laying out the
shape of the neck on the piece of hard maple chosen for the project--this
piece was 35 inches long and 4-1/2 inches wide, and 13/16 inches
thick.
Next I determined the length,
width and depth necessary for the channel for the double-action
truss rod--then cut the slot with the router. The slot is 1/4"
wide, 3/8" deep, and extends 24 inches from the end of the
headstock.
The first picture shows the
headstock portion of the neck after it had beeb "planed"
down to 9/16-inch thickness, using the sanding drum on the radial
saw. After I had it down to 9/16-inch, I used the orbital sander
to smooth and level it--the drum left it pretty rough and uneven.
This is what the whole neck
looks like--sorta like a fretless, methinks. But that's 'cuz
the fret slots don't show up in this picture, that's all. The
neck was carved to shape with the sanding drum, then sanded smooth
with the orbital sander, just like the headstock. Then I sanded
the whole thing by hand with 150 grit sandpaper, and followed
that with 220-grit sandpaper.
This is the back of the neck--you
can see a little bit of the flame figure in the wood, but these
pictures don't really do it justice.
The positions of the tuning
machine holes was taken from a paper template I printed from
Fender's Mr Gearhead support website. I used an 11/16-inch spade
bit in the drill press, and cut part way through from the top.
This step makes a pilot hole through to the back, which I used
to locate the spade bit when I cut the rest of the way through
from the back. This picture shows the back of the headstock after
the holes for the tuning machines had been cut.
And this is the front of the
headstock:
In the next step I cut shallow
1/4-inch holes in the fretboard for the position markers, which
are 1/4-inch diameter circles of abalone shell about 1/16th of
an inch thick. I used a 1/4" brad-point drill bit to cut
these holes with the drill press, after locating their postions
and marking them with a pencil. The postions were located from
measurements taken on a MightyMite Jazz Bass neck.
This picture shows the abalone
shell dots in place--but they're not glued in yet. The depths
of the holes aren't right yet, so I had to do a little delicate
work to make them all the right depth. Tricky!
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